Chapter Five

Consumer Markets and Buyer

Behavior

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc.  

Chapter 5- slide 1
Publishing as Prentice Hall
Consumer Markets and Consumer
Buyer Behavior
Topic Outline
• Model of Consumer Behavior
• Characteristics Affecting Consumer
Behavior
• Types of Buying Decision Behavior
• The Buyer Decision Process
• The Buyer Decision Process for New
Products
 Model of Consumer Behavior

Consumer buyer behavior : the buying behavior of

final consumers, individuals and households,
who buy goods and services for personal
consumption.

Consumer market : all of the personal consumption

of final consumers
 What is consumer behavior?

• Consumer behavior: the study of the

processes involved when individuals or
groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of
products, services, ideas, or experiences to
satisfy needs and desires.
• How do consumers respond to various
marketing efforts the company might use?
The starting point is the stimulus-response
model of buyer behavior
Stimulus Response Model of
Consumer Behavior
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior
CULTURAL FACTORS
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior

Culture is the learned values, perceptions,

wants, and behavior from family and other
important institutions and is the most basic
cause of a person’s wants and behavior
• Culture determines the consumer’s
experiences, beliefs, and values, which in
turn is directly linked to attitudes,
emotions, social norms, intentions, and
behaviors.
• Culture is an important factor in
determining consumer behavior. It explains
why some products sell well in certain
regions or among specific groups, but not
as well elsewhere.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Subcultures are groups of people within a culture
with shared value systems based on common life
experiences and situations. Subcultures include
nationalities, religions, racial groups, and
geographic regions
• Hispanic American
• African American
• Asian American
• Cross-Cultural
 Culture

• Marketers spend a great deal of time and money studying

the effects of culture on consumer behavior. This is
especially true for multinational companies that have
customers from a diverse series of cultural backgrounds.

• A strong marketing strategy in one culture might be

unappealing, or even offensive, to members of another
culture. Marketers cater to specific cultural behaviors by
offering different versions of the same product that are
tailored to appeal to the target audience.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Social classes are society’s relatively
permanent and ordered divisions whose
members share similar values, interests,
and behaviors
• Measured by a combination of occupation,
income, education, wealth, and other
variables
Major American Social Classes
SOCIAL FACTORS
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Groups and Social Networks

Membership Groups
• Groups with direct influence and to
which a person belongs
Aspirational Groups
• Groups an individual wishes to belong
to
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Groups and Social Networks
• Word-of-mouth influence
– Opinion leaders are people
within a reference group who
exert social influence on others
– Also called influentials or
leading adopters
– Marketers identify them to use
as brand ambassadors
Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Groups and Social Networks
• Online Social Networks are
online communities where
people socialize or exchange
information and opinions
• Include blogs, social
networking sites (facebook),
virtual worlds (second life)
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Social Factors

• Family is the most important consumer-buying

organization in society
• Social roles and status are the groups, family, clubs,
and organizations that a person belongs to that can
define role and social status
PERSONAL FACTORS
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Personal Factors
• A buyer’s decisions also are influenced by
personal characteristics such as the buyer’s
age and life-cycle stage, occupation,
economic situation, lifestyle, and
personality and self-concept.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Personal Factors

Occupation affects the goods and services

bought by consumers.
Age and Life Stage
People change the good and services they
buy over their lifetime.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Personal Factors
Lifestyle is a person’s
pattern of living as
expressed in his or her
psychographics

The lifestyle concept can

help marketers understand
changing consumer values
and how they affect buyer
behavior. Consumers don’t
just buy products; they buy
the values and lifestyles
those products represent.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Personal Factors

• Personality: the unique psychological

characteristics that lead to consistent and
lasting responses to the consumer’s
environment
PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors

Motivation

Perception

Learning

Beliefs and attitudes

 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors

Perception is the process by

which people select,
organize, and interpret
information to form a
meaningful picture of the
world from three perceptual
processes
 Perception

• Sensation refers to the immediate response of

our sensory receptors (eyes, ears, nose, mouth,
fingers) to such basic stimuli as light, color, sound,
odors, and textures.
• Perception is the process by which these
sensations are selected, organized, and
interpreted. The study of perception, then,
focuses on what we add to these raw sensations
to give them meaning
 Sensory Systems
• Vision
• Scent
• Sound
• Touch
• Taste
 Vision

• Marketers communicate meaning on a

visual channel using a product’s color, size,
and styling.

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 • Red can create feelings of excitement and stimulate
appetite,red backgrounds perform better when
consumers have to remember details.
• Red is used to grab attention

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5-35
 • Women are drawn toward brighter tones,
perhaps because females see color better
than males.
• Older people prefer white and bright tones,
perhaps because colors look duller to older
people

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 Scent
• Like color, odor can also stir
emotions and memory.
• Scent Marketing is a form of
sensory marketing that we
may see in
coffeeshops,chocolates
detergents, and more.

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 Scent Marketing

• People will know that they are entering a

particular store as soon as they step in and
smell its beautiful aroma.
• McDonalds
• Starbucks
 Sound

• Background music helps create a personal

space for customers, giving them privacy as
they walk around the store, browse the
products and make comments to friends or
family
Touch
Key Concepts in the Use of Touch

• Touch matters.
People are more sure about what they
perceive when they can touch it.
 Taste

• Taste is influenced by biological factors

(taste receptors) and cultural factors (the
image and values associated with food
influence how we experience taste).
 Perception

• Perception is a three-stage process that

translates raw stimuli into meaning
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc.  
Chapter 5- slide 46
Publishing as Prentice Hall
 Attention
• Exposure is when a stimulus comes within the
range of someone’s sensory receptors.

• Attention is the extent to which processing

activity is devoted to a particular stimulus
Consumers experience sensory overload
Marketers need to break through the clutter.

• Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign

to sensory stimuli.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors
• Learning is the change in an individual’s
behavior arising from experience and
occurs through interplay of:

Drives Stimuli Cues

Responses Reinforcement
Intentional Learning
• Intentional learning is
generally defined
as learning that is motivated
by intentions and is goal
directed. ... In other words:
To be engaged in intentional
learning the learner has to
invest some effort in
reflection and in controlling
and
maintaining learning strateg
ies
Unintentional Learning
•  Incidental learning refers to
any learning that is
unplanned or unintended
• Incidental learning happens
outside
formal teaching environmen
ts. It's what happens when
we learn something new
from watching television,
reading a book, talking with
a friend, playing a video
game 
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors
Motivation

A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing

to direct the person to seek satisfaction

Motivation research refers to qualitative

research designed to probe consumers’
hidden, subconscious motivations
Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors
Beliefs and Attitudes

A belief is a descriptive thought that a person has about

something. Beliefs may be based on real knowledge,
opinion, or faith and may or may not carry an emotional
charge. Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people
formulate about specific products and services because
these beliefs make up product and brand images that
affect buying behavior. If some of the beliefs are wrong
and prevent purchase, the marketer will want to launch a
campaign to correct them.
 Characteristics Affecting
Consumer Behavior
Psychological Factors

Attitudes
describe a person’s relatively
consistent evaluations, feelings, and
tendencies toward an object or idea
• BUYING DECISION BEHAVIOR
&
• THE BUYER DECISION PROCESS
The Buyer Decision Process

Buyer Decision Making Process

PROBLEM RECOGNITION

2-56
 The Buyer Decision Process
Need Recognition

• Occurs when the buyer recognizes a

problem or need triggered by:
– Internal stimuli
– External stimuli
INFORMATION SERACH

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 The Buyer Decision Process
Information Search
Sources of Information
• Personal sources—family and friends
• Commercial sources—advertising, Internet
• Public sources—mass media, consumer organizations
• Experiential sources—handling, examining, using the
product
 Cont..

• Information search or pre-purchase

search is the second step. Once people are
aroused by stimuli, they look for
information that can satisfy their sense of
need. There are four main channels for
search: personal (e.g. friends and family),
commercial (e.g. advertisement), public
(e.g. consumer ratings), and
experimental/personal experience with a
product.
EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES

2-61
 The Buyer Decision Process
Evaluation of Alternatives

• How the consumer processes information

to arrive at brand choices
 The Buyer Decision Process
Purchase Decision

• The act by the consumer to buy the most

preferred brand
• The purchase decision can be affected by:
– Attitudes of others
– Unexpected situational factors
 The Buyer Decision Process
Post-Purchase Decision
• The satisfaction or dissatisfaction that the
consumer feels about the purchase
• Relationship between:
– Consumer’s expectations
– Product’s perceived performance
• The larger the gap between expectation and
performance, the greater the consumer’s
dissatisfaction
• Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort caused
by a post-purchase conflict
 The Buyer Decision Process
Post-Purchase Decision

Customer satisfaction is a key to building

profitable relationships with consumers—to
keeping and growing consumers and
reaping their customer lifetime value
 The Buyer Decision Process for
New Products

Adoption process is the mental process an

individual goes through from first learning
about an innovation to final regular use.
• Stages in the process include:

Awareness Interest Evaluation Trial Adoption

• Awareness is consumers become aware of
new products but lack information about it.
• Interest : A consumer seeks information
about the new product.
• Evaluation: The consumer considers
whether trying the new product makes
sense or not.
• Trial: The consumer tries the new product
on a small scale.
• Adoption: The consumer decides to make
full and regular use of the new product.
 The Buyer Decision Process for
New Products
Differences in Innovativeness Adopter
Categories
• People differ greatly in their readiness to
try new products. In each product area,
there are “consumption pioneers” and early
adopters. Other individuals adopt new
products much later. People can be
classified into the adopter categories
 The Buyer Decision Process for
New Products
Differences in Innovativeness Adopter
Categories

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Mainstream
• Late Mainstream
• Lagging Adopters
• Innovators: These individuals adopt new technology or ideas simply because
they are new. Innovators tend to take risks more readily and are the most
venturesome.

• Early adopters: This group tends to create opinions, which propel trends. They
are not unlike innovators in how quickly they take on new technologies and
ideas but are more concerned about their reputation as being ahead of the
curve.

• Early majority: This group makes decisions based on utility and practical
benefits over coolness.

• Late majority: The late majority shares some traits with the early majority but
is more cautious before committing, needing more hand-holding as they
adopt.

• Laggards: This group is slow to adapt to new ideas or technology. They tend to
adopt only when they are forced to or because everyone else has already.
 Types of Buying Decision
Behavior

Complex buying behavior

Dissonance-reducing buying behavior

Habitual buying behavior

Variety-seeking buying behavior

Types of Buying Decision
Behavior
Four Types of Buying Behavior